In Memory of CHARLES BACCHUS by Natasha Walker

In Memory of CHARLES BACCHUS

(an African) who died March 31. 1762. He was belov'd and Lamented by the Family he Serv'd was Grateful, and Humane and gave hopes of Proving a faithful Servant and a Good Man. Aged 16

Here titles cease! Ambitions oer! And Slave of Monarch, is no more. The Good alone will find in Heav'n, Rewards assign’d, and Honour giv'n.

I had slept very lightly since the fever took my brothers. I was my mother’s fifth boy and we were owned by Thomas Bond. We slept under the Blue Mountains at Mona Plantation with more than two hundred slaves. Jamaica was sugar, Mr Bond said. And there were more than four hundred and nineteen sugar-mills when I was born. Mr Bond said I was too beautiful for the fields and the canes that scarred my hands.

I smiled at my weeping sisters when I was taken away to the big ship at Port Royal. My mother had wailed on losing her first son, and her tears had dried up now, she said. My father died the day before I was born. Mr Bond said he was a good man and loyal, though weak.

The boat slid away like a frightened fish, and I spent weeks in great fear and discomfort. We unloaded seven of their sailors and fourteen other slaves, their bodies disintegrating before our eyes as their convulsions ceased.

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I served tea for the pale-faced soldiers on board the ship and learned to smile at all times with my white teeth. The journey gave me practice in hearing and mouthing their language - hard and soft at the same time, crispy metal in my ears.

The captain often shrugged and called us animals, though his eyes were kind.

England was a shore of ice and shouting, chains for our feet and whips cracking around our heads. I bowed before them and was taken to a new Mr Bond, his eyes bluer than his brother’s. My home was a muddy place called Haselbech. Mr Richard Bond told me he was the largest landowner in Haselbech and his wife, Mrs Dorcas, told me she had wanted a little black boy because I reminded her of Jamaica and her first husband, Robert Fotherby, who had left her everything except his body. She told me he had had it opened for science and the benefit of mankind. She told me that she loved Mr Bond more fondly despite his love of money.

I was baptised Charles Bacchus on 18th October 1754. I was eight years old and opened my mouth wide to say the first of my given names, before clipping my lips and snapping my teeth to shout out the second. I only did this on my own as Mrs Dorcas told me never to speak. I was given the care of Rebecca and Sarah when the nurse was sick, as she often was, her breath reeking like death. Mrs Dorcas said there were no good servants to be got in Northamptonshire.

When guests came, I stood by the door with my chest out and my white teeth smiling and took their hats with my white gloved hands. And sometimes the men patted my head, making the women laugh. from Culworth was a regular guest and was called on to give his opinion on all matters. This was due to his situation and age, rather than his taste or wit.

Rebecca and I traced the lines on our palms and she looked at me with her blue eyes and cried all night when her mother died. Little

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Miss Sarah was too young to miss her, but I found Miss Rebecca in the early mornings lying on the cold floor at her mother’s door. When we moved to Culworth to Mr Bond’s dry new house, Sarah soon smiled, but Rebecca shut her mouth tight and never spoke for over a year to any soul but me. Mr Bond asked me to speak for her and so all those words I had whispered or thought over the silent years came dancing out and flowered into sentences and Rebecca’s feelings shuddered awake. I called her Coco which is what my mother called me. Mr Bond understood how sad his daughter was and asked me to make her laugh as he had work to do to fix the business in Jamaica.

Mr Bond told me that one never knew whether things would go right in Jamaica. And I remember my mother telling me about the great quake that had set her great-grandmother free when it destroyed Port Royal and sucked all the buildings into the sand. Rebecca listened to the songs I sang in the old language about the great sadness of those who had known the motherland. My mother told me that my greatgrandmother was beaten to death after she was recaptured and left a son, my grandfather, who, in turn, left his soul and fourteen children at Mona.

Mr Bond went to London after Christmas in 1762 and said that I was a man now. Emma Downe, who walked so straight, would have made me a good wife, he said, but that, alas, it would never be. He brought me a new livery, gold and red, and I stood, tall and proud, at his door to welcome guests of great consequence. The cold, dry air made their boots ring and click like clocks.

I had suffered some sickness on arriving in England, but the cough that I tried to swallow a week later knocked me out. I was ashamed and Mr Bond said he was disappointed. I had to stay alone in the stable to protect the family. I knew Miss Rebecca would need me, so my body swelled and seemed to mend itself within a fortnight. But the sickness burrowed itself into my heart and as we knelt to pray on the fifth Sunday in Lent, I asked the Lord for forgiveness of my sins

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and to offer comfort for Miss Rebecca, for I knew I was close to death. Mr Bond asked me if I had any brothers and sisters and when I told him my four brothers were dead, Vicar John Hutchins came close and told me to rejoice for I would be joining them soon.

Sir Michael Danvers himself came to see me and Mr Bond told him he wouldn’t have another African, even though he had no idea where he was going to find a good servant to replace me. Sir Michael Danvers said Mr Bond should be very grateful to have been served so well, as his experience with Africans had been unexceptionally bad. Mr Bond said he knew as such and no man should think him ungrateful.

I didn’t send Miss Rebecca away when she kissed me goodbye, even though I knew I should have.

Natasha Walker

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